How pre-flight safety videos can save lives

A safety video playing on board an Emirates Airbus A380-800 in January 2019. Airlines spend millions producing these videos and change them often, hoping that people will pay attention. — Dreamstime/TNS

If you’ve flown recently you’ve probably watched – wait, who am I kidding, failed to watch – an airline’s pre-flight safety video. And look, I get it. You didn’t watch because nothing ever happens.

Until it does, as it did at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport on Jan 2, when a Japan Airlines Airbus A350 struck a military aircraft upon landing, and five days later when a large piece of an Alaska Airlines 737 ripped away from the fuselage at nearly 5,000m. The fact that all 379 passengers and crew safely escaped the burning JAL aircraft with just a few minor injuries, and that no one was sucked out of the 737, which made a safe emergency landing, have been called miraculous.